Ami Bera and Doug Ose on the issues

Bera: “The Affordable Care Act is not the solution that I would have come up with as a doctor and a healthcare expert, but it is now the law, so let’s take this law, let’s fix it and let’s make it better.”

Ose: “Obamacare is failing to address our healthcare needs. In fact, it’s costing us jobs through all sorts of sectors dealing with small business and the like ... I’m in favor of repealing it and replacing it with something that works, that doesn’t kill jobs.”

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Bera: “When I ran, we ran on this promise: I wasn’t going to take any pay raises until we got Sacramento County working again. I’ve kept that promise.”

Ose: “I’m a small business owner. I’ve been a small business owner since the day I got out of college. I know what it takes to create a job.”

Water and drought

Bera: “Long term, though, we have to make sure we fight against proposals like the tunnels that the governor wants to build.”

“The climate has changed. We’ve lost our snowpack. Now my opponent, Congressman Ose, thinks the climate science is ‘sketchy.’ He doesn’t necessarily believe the climate has changed. I think it has, so we have to come up with new ways to catch water, store it and move the water.”

Ose: “I wish a member of Congress had the ability to make it rain, but they don’t. But a member of Congress does have the ability to get the Bureau of Reclamation to reduce the outflows from Folsom Dam at a time when we are at historic lows in terms of rainfall ... Congressman Bera has declined to make any effort to reduce the outflows from Folsom Dam.”

Immigration

Bera: “We should want the best and brightest to come here, but we should also want them to stay here and build their companies here and create those jobs here.”

“Comprehensive means let’s actually address a broken immigration system. Let’s secure our borders, let’s make sure we get the best and brightest to come here to America, but we let them stay here, build their jobs here. Let’s address the issue of folks working on farms and so forth.”

Ose: “I think the first step that we need to take on immigration is to secure our borders and our ports of entry to prevent additional individuals coming in here that we don’t know who they are or where they come from.”

“I just need a definition what ‘comprehensive’ means. In Congressman Bera’s view, that means all the folks who are here illegally are given amnesty and citizenship. That’s what he’s after. I’m not prepared today to go that far.”

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Bera: “I support the president’s stepped-up screening mechanism. We have a terrific public health infrastructure here, but we have to screen people in-country in West Africa, and then we also have to work with border and customs agents here in America to make sure if people are developing symptoms that we’re isolating and identifying them.”

Ose: “I think the administration has finally stepped up and started taking the Ebola threat seriously. I applaud them for doing that. I wish they had done it weeks ago, when it first broke out in August, if I recall, because I think we’d be far further along to making sure that the homeland is protected.”

Islamic State

Bera: “These guys are terrorists, and these guys are the worst of the worst. That said, this is a challenge that has to be dealt with by the people in that region: the Iraqis, the Jordanians, the Saudis. I did support the president’s limited airstrikes and so forth because we have to degrade ISIL, we have to combat them, and we have to set them back. But I’m against putting ground forces in the Middle East again. We’ve been down that road before.”

Ose: “I do believe that the president has not paid attention to ISIS, that it has manifested itself into something that’s quite serious, that is going to require a joint effort. I’m very concerned that the president’s efforts on the international front are failing to create the coalition that will address the very real question that every military expert has said, which is we have to have boots on the ground.”